Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 8

Q: How do we account for the historical Person of Jesus Christ? He has made such an impact upon history that we even measure our calendar by Him. 2000 years on and millions still follow Him.

A: Since the previous FAQ proved to be rather ridiculous, I've decided to answer two in a day and get this farce over with. Now, the historicity of Jesus. There's no such thing. Not a shred of evidence outside the Christian writings, and self-reference hardly counts as evidence. The theory of Jesus as a historical figure relies almost entirely on the four gospels, anonymous texts (the names of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were added to the titles - or, rather, the titles themselves were added - only around 180 CE, out of thin air) supposedly based on older texts which, will you look at that, are lost, nowhere to be found. What all of this means is that:

The almighty god of the Judeo-Christian tradition sent his own son - that is, himself - to save mankind from a ruling he himself had issued and, in so doing, he had to sacrifice himself to himself. In the process, though, he forgot to write down anything of his own, no revelations and no prophecies, trusting oral communication to be enough. And now we have a canon Bible, with four gospels said to be an accurate report of the deeds and words of Jesus and his apostles but whose earliest versions available are written in Koine Greek - whereas the languages of the alleged Jesus and his apostles had to be Aramaic - and which are anonymous as well as undated. That is basically to say that the belief of all Christians around the world is based on secondary documents, translations - if they actually are translations of previous texts - whose source texts are not available for quality assessment because, apparently, this almighty god did not care enough about the original manuscripts to prevent them from being lost or destroyed. Not only that, but these translations - although officially recounting the same events - also contradict each other more often than would be acceptable even for a historical document by a human, fallible, mortal author. One example, but many others could be made, is that of the description of Jesus' lineage. The authors of the gospels trace Jesus' genealogy to the house of David through Joseph, Jesus' human father. As they do this they contradict each other, which is difficult to imagine if said authors had actually been contemporaries of Jesus. Matthew says Jesus descended from the house of David through Solomon, whereas according to Luke it was through Nathan. Then Luke tells us that the name of Joseph's father was Heli whereas Matthew says it was Jacob. Then again, all attempts to trace Jesus' genealogy back through the house of David through Joseph are rather silly, if Jospeh really wasn't Jesus' biological father as the Bible would have us believe. All these incongruences are difficult to justify and the only explanation is that the authors of the gospels were not really Aramaic-speaking contemporaries of Jesus and that the Greek "translations" we have are actually the originals, written by later authors to support the Jesus myth.

It is then easy to see how using texts inherent to the very Christian faith in order to prove Jesus' historicity is a clumsy choice at best. Unfortunately for Christian apologetics, non-Christian sources are not all too useful either, and actually make the situation even worse for proponents of an historical Jesus. Sometimes Christians like to claim there to be an impressive amount of first-hand historical evidence of the existence of Jesus. Unfortunately, there is not a single document dating back to the alleged Jesus' lifetime, or immediately after, and bearing witness to the man's deeds and words. Not from Josephus, a Romano-Jewish historian contemporary of the alleged Jesus, outside of a later, Christian interpolation recognised as such even by prominent apologetics. Not from a contemporary and rival historian of Josephus, Justus of Tiberias, who, in the words of Photius, 9th-century Patriarch of Constantinople, "makes not one mention of Jesus, of what happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did." Not from anyone else. There is an impressive lack of whatever historical reference to a Jesus for centuries - and for decades even as far as Christian writings go - after his alleged lifetime and death. It's as if he had been forgotten and rediscovered by historians who, as a result of tradition and religious compliance, were obliged to take his existence for granted, as is still the case. Well, it's about time we destroyed the myth of a general consensus in the scholarly community.

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 7

Q: How do you explain the changed lives of millions of people throughout history who testify to a life changing experience with Jesus Christ?

A: How do you explain the changed lives of millions of people throughout history who testify to a life changing experience with the Buddha? How about those whose life has been changed for the better by abandoning metaphysical belief entirely? Seriously, do you really think this an actual argument? I think I've said enough already.

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 6

Q: Where does all the matter in the universe come from?

A: Well, this is easy. We don't know. There are different theories but unfortunately we cannot test them as we can't travel back to the moment of the Big Bang or to the time before the Big Bang, given that there was most likely no "where" and "when" prior to the Big Bang itself. The general consensus is that the Big Bang did not happen inside our universe, but that it created it, giving birth to space - and consequently time - itself. Basically, asking what was before the Big Bang is not only irrelevant but also makes little sense, as there was no before and the knowledge of it would in no way mutilate the power of the theory to explain how the universe came to be or the power of all physical theories to describe how it currently works. Still, if we insist on asking this question, then we should assume an agnostic stance on the origin of the universe while waiting for further discoveries - which, of course, is not the same as to say that we should consider an almighty creator as a possibility.

It's funny. Whenever arguments against the existence of god are given - and no matter how convincing they are - the Creationist reaction is to call everyone arrogant, claiming we should define ourselves at least agnostic about it. But then, when the scientific community admits not to have all the answers yet and that we should not jump to conclusions while waiting for further study to be carried out, the Creationists are the first to claim that gap for themselves and their deity, whatever it may be. All of a sudden, science's "dunno" becomes in their eyes an admission to ignorance and powerlessness. Double standards only make the Creationists out there laughable, I think.

Ultimately, Creationism will never be an answer as it raises more questions than it answers even assuming, as some Creationists do, that the Big Bang actually happened but that god was behind it. Where was god before the Big Bang? Where is he now? Who created god in the first place? Were the materials used by god to create the universe also created ex nihilo? How is that possible if a singularity arising from nothing is not possible either? Creationism is not scientific and will never be. The notion of god's existence is not falsifiable and requires the existence of a metaphysical power that cannot be tolerated by natural laws unless we strip it of its omniscient and almighty side. God is not the answer to the question.

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 5

Q: What about the evidence of design in all of creation? It is obvious that anything that is designed has to have an intelligent creator. For example, a computer never came about by mere accident, but had to have been thought out and planned by an intelligent designer. It is the same with creation, and more so, as the natural world is far more complicated than anything humanity can create.

A: Enough with the Watchmaker analogy, already. It was rejected by scientists and liberal theologians alike already in the late 19th century, there was absolutely no need to resuscitate this crap. But still, Creationists did and here we are, in 2008, still fighting the same absurdities William Paley had come up with in 1802. The only difference being that he did not have the means to know how foolish his argument was and that, indeed, considering the knowledge of the day it probably also made sense. Anyway, let's go over this one more time.

The Argument from Design goes like this. Suppose you're walking on the beach and all of a sudden you see a watch being washed ashore. You pick it up and the first thing you think, apparently, is "how cool is that. This watch and its inner functioning are so complex that it surely must have been designed by a great mind." For this reason, Creationists think, the universe and its incredible complexity and order must have been the creation of a Creator.

Wrong. I'm not sure exactly how many rebuttals to this arguments have been proposed throughout history, but I think I know at least a few.

I) A watch is complex.
II) A watch was designed and created by a watchmaker.
III) The universe is complex.
IV) The universe was therefore designed and created.

• The consequence does not follow from the premises. The fact that watches and the universe share characteristic X, which is complexity, does not imply that they will also share characteristic Z, having been created. Furthermore, watches and the universe do not share characteristic Y, that is being orderly, as will be shown later on. Leaves and money bills are complex cellulose structures, yet money bills do not grow on trees, no matter how strongly some people wish they did.
  

• A watchmaker is bound to create watches from pre-existing materials, whereas the Creationists' god is supposed to have created the universe ex nihilo. The analogy, as it is, doesn't stand on its own, unless we assume there was a creator who created the materials the other creator worked on to build the universe, or that one creator did both things.

• But even then, if so complex a universe just had to be created by a god, then so complex a mind that it could, in its turn, create such complexity had to be created as well. If we assume, as Creationists always do, that their god requires no first cause and that it has simply always been, then there is no reason not to assume that the universe and its complexity have always existed, in one form or another, and that they require no first cause. Creationists, from the height of their wisdom, have never been able to address this point.

• Also, the watchmaker from the analogy most likely had a father. Most likely he also had a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a great-great-grandfather and so on. Assuming that at least a few of these men had been watchmakers within their lifetime, they had probably learnt the skills from someone and then passed on the knowledge to the following generations. With each passing generation, however, the knowledge was worked upon, expanded, slightly modified with a pace equal to that of technological evolution, improving materials, tools and techniques. All this, if anything, resembles much more Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, unless we assume that the Creationist god had a nearly endless series of gods coming before him, passing the noble art of universe-making down to each generation, improving it all the time.

• All this, however, would make the Creationists' current god only a newcomer and a sucky one at that. I contend that the nature of the universe is far from being as orderedly complex as Creationists like to assume. This god wouldn't pass Engineering or Architecture 101 in any decent university. As far as universes go, this one is a real mess. There was a time even scientists believed our universe to be not only incredibly complex but also incredibly orderly, but then Einstein came along and started proving to us that we were sorely mistaken. There is absolutely nothing designed in our chaotic and violent universe. Think of Einstein's relativity. What omniscient and almighty creator would create a universe in which time is dilated by high gravitational potential? What god would disseminate his creation with exploding stars, black holes - placing one at the centre of most galaxies -, bathe everything in a deadly dose of ionizing radiation, then pick a random pale blue dot in an insignificant corner of one of the countless galaxies of this universe and then populate it with such an astounding number of species including us, not bothering to correct flaws that an eight-grader could pinpoint? Why create genetic mutations and deadly viruses and bacteria? And why make us, who are supposed to be god's greatest creation, susceptible to all this? Why make our bodies so weak and imperfect? Was god simply unable to create something better or unwilling to create something better? Sorry, but Epicurus nailed it a long time ago.

I could go on like this for a little longer, but I'm honestly growing tired. I'll leave it at that, so that everyone can draw personal conclusions.

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 4

Q: Isn’t it a bit extreme to assert "God does not exist"? To make such a statement you would have to have complete knowledge and to have been everywhere in the universe. Maybe God dwells somewhere in the universe you don’t know of or have not been to? Is that possible?

A: There is so much wrong with this question that I'm having a hard time deciding where to start dissecting it. As I see it, this is but a version of the old "you can't prove a negative" dogma. I'm not sure where this particular argument originated but it commonly seems to have its one and only line of defence in a broken understanding of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. However, I feel that getting into Quantum physics just to address the point raised would be pretty much useless, so I'll keep it much simpler.

First off, not all atheists are equally assertive. Many will stick to a mild lack of belief in a supernatural reality or specifically in a creative power. However, just as many - including me - will go as far as to say that god does not exist. In doing so we're often spat at the aforementioned rebuke about negatives being unprovable. What most believers fail to understand is that "you can't prove a negative" is as self-contradicting as a statement can possibly be. If negatives cannot be proven, then one cannot prove that the absolute, negative statement "you can't prove a negative" is true either, therefore destroying every bit of its absoluteness and leaving us with a statement that sounds rather more like "some negatives can be proven." Think of a statement such as "one is not the same as two." It is common sense that one and two are not the same, we can easily take it as a postulate without bothering to look for supportive evidence. Same goes for less mathematical statements. Let's take for example "the ancient Romans did not build the Hubble telescope." Should we declare ourselves agnostics about the making of the Hubble? Don't think so. The real deal with most negative statements is not really that they can't be proven, rather that they needn't be proven at all. If, on the other hand, one were to use an affirmative phrase like "the ancient Romans did build the Hubble telescope," then that person would be in serious trouble as his, and only his, would be the burden of proof.

Statements about the existence of god are really not all too different, as demonstrated by the hopeless quest for evidence proponents of Creationism need to embark on whenever they seek to have some sort of rational debate. Whoever claims that "god exists," has the responsibility to provide enough evidence to support such claim, else it is bound to be rejected. Sure, someone might contend that we have enough historical and archaeological evidence to rule out the possibility that the Romans could have built anything even vaguely comparable to the Hubble, whereas we have no piece of evidence as irrefutable as that to rule out the existence of god. Of course one such person would have to wilfully and ill-willingly ignore centuries of scientific achievements, but dignity doesn't seem to be amongst the top concerns of the average theist these days. But really, the real problem with all this is not the Creationist tendency to claim evidence they don't actually have, rather the fact that statements about the existence of an entity "god" are completely and utterly useless without a meaningful definition of "god," and theists are usually unable to provide a clear one. Roughly put, you can't possibly disprove the existence of a vague "god" whose attributes are unspecified. Of course you can nearly always safely assume that the god theist X is talking about is the one of the Judeo-Christian tradition and, in that context, "god does not exist," is far from being an arrogant statement.

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 3

Q: Why does humanity seem to have an innate desire and need to worship something, or someone? Why is there such a universal religious sense within humanity?

A: Once again, the question is intentionally misleading. I don't think there is such a universal religious sense within humanity. First of all the fact that no child will display religious behaviour unless led to do so by the surrounding culture - and that the particular belief held by the kid in that case will be that spawned by the surrounding culture - is proof enough that we are, by all means, born atheists and, in far too many cases, raised otherwise. Secondly, the fact that so many people, at some point in their lives, leave metaphysical belief behind is proof enough that we are not compelled by our genetic heritage to embrace a particular religion or world view. Yes, I am aware of the research that is being done into the possibility of a "god gene," and I find it all quite interesting. Still, gene activation and deactivation is a factor that should be kept in mind. Possessing the "god gene," should such a thing actually exist, would not necessarily bind one to belief for the rest of his or her existence.

There are, however, two characteristics that are inescapably hard-wired within us and that have given birth to mystical belief, organised religions and organised theologies. These two characteristics are 1) a constant search for meaning in a way that it minimises cognitive dissonance and 2) the need to keep one's sense of belonging alive and well. Belief and organised religion has been able to satisfy both such needs for most of our history and I don't think anyone in his right mind could deny that belief and religion have served some evolutionary purpose. Natural selection leaves little choice, if something is useful it will survive. Religion and belief have survived because they are the easy way out. It takes much less psychological effort to abandon oneself to the idea that a creative power has shaped everything that exists and, at the mere price of having to swallow mindless dogma and respect strict rules, one can feel part of a comprehensive group. The worship of a deity, and the sense of submission towards said deity are not hard-wired in us, but mere by-products of particular religious beliefs, a price to pay in order to be part of a group. Different cultures in different historical periods and geographical locations have built different religious customs around more or less different conceptions of deity, thereby altering the price to pay in order to be part of those particular groups. Some abandon entirely the concept of collective worship, favouring private rituals, whereas others subordinate the belief in one or more deities to the more central idea of ancestor or animal worship. All this, rather than being evidence of a transcending reality we are intrinsically attuned with, is evidence that religious beliefs and rituals are culture-determined and survive natural selection provided they are able to cater for the two aforementioned human needs.

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 2

Atheism 101 FAQ pt. 2

As promised, here comes another Q/A.

Q: Where does all of the incredibly complex information come from that is stored within DNA? Information doesn’t just appear by itself. Someone has to put it there.

A: This is probably the most interesting question of all those on the list. At least it would be if it were asked with an underlying dose of intellectual honesty. The problem with it is that it's intentionally vague. I'm far from being an expert on information theory, yet even I can tell that to ask such a question one must first provide a definition of information to work on. Somehow I get the feeling that what Creationists actually have in mind is a particular understanding - or, rather, misunderstanding - of information that might favour their own agenda if they manage to phrase the question with enough ambiguity. But as far as reality goes, genetic information "generates itself." RNA and Protein splicing, Frame-shit mutations, deletions, duplications, insertions, etc., all these occurrences result in mutations and, as a consequence, in genetic information which is slightly different from the original one. The resulting genetic code, whether Creationists like it or not, is new information generated via imperfect natural mechanisms. The usual rebuke made by Creationists to this is that such mechanisms either simply act on existing information modifying it or they simply give way to detrimental or, at best, neutral mutations. All of a sudden they demand instances of such mechanisms giving rise not just to mutations, but to beneficial mutations - which was obviously their hidden agenda right from the start - regardless of the fact that benefit is in no way a prerogative of genetic mutations and of the resulting new information, since benefit is always relative to the environment. To put it in the terms of Information Theory, mutations create Shannon Information content in the form of new nucleotide chains, whereas selection will increase the specificity of the new information once the content is transformed into active protein with a function, thereby crushing all Creationist hopes of finding their safety in Information Theory. One could then provide examples of beneficial mutations, such as the evolution of photoreceptors in mammals (for further information see Michael H. Rowe, Trichromatic Color Vision in Primates, News in Physiological Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 3, 93-98, June 2002, relevant section available with full text here.), but not even that could possibly shake the Creationists' conviction that the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has to be wrong because their deity cannot possibly be.